Our friend from town of Sabaneta, Barinas Mr. Chavez is so paranoid about the CIA nailing him for his anti-US Rhetoric he instituted a new law designed to help ferret out spies. Part of the law apparently requires judges and prosecutors to squeal about anything and everything they know… to the secret intelligence network. Forget about due process. Next forget about lawyer client privilege – no need for that in Venezuela either.

According to the BBC article I picked this up from: “Here you have the president legislating by decree that the country’s judges must serve as spies for the government,” Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director for Human Rights Watch, said.

The United States actually beat him to the punchline years before with the Patriot Act. That gives military and intelligence gathers permission to wiretap without court orders. When the US Patriot Act was created, Chavez blasted the US calling it a “dictatorial law”. He has a better way to word it calling his law “a framework of great respect for human rights”.

If that is not a total joke I don’t know what is. Absurd Law – on one hand the freedom and liberty types would call it an abomination. The right wing military types would call it a get out of jail card.